Finding You Was Like Coming Home
by BiOfTheTiger
Summary: Takes place after the fall and the trials. No, Gadreel/Zeke is not in it. Sorry. Cas is missing and Deanna and Sam (mostly Deanna) are trying to find him before the angels do.


"Too late! Cas is umm... he's gone! He's dead! We run the show now."

Deanna felt her stomach drop and her heart stop because no, no, not again. Cas looked at her- or the Leviathan did, because there was no way in hell that was Cas. His eyes that were usually those brilliant cerulean orbs were dead. She looked at him, and that was when she knew the Leviathan was telling the truth. Cas was-

"DEE!" Deanna's eyes flitted open to see someone standing over her.

"Cas?" She whispered hopefully. She blinked a few times and saw Sam's long hair hanging in his worried eyes.

"Were you having some kind of nightmare?"

She was all prepared to shake her head and blow it off, but then it just came out. "Yes," she said, her throat raw and scratchy.

Sam sat down next to her on the bed. "You were screaming and crying and thrashing around. I thought you were being possessed or something."

Deanna took the glass of water from her nightstand and downed it.

"Did you, uh.." Sam shifted on the bed. "Did you want to talk about it?"

She was gonna say no, honest. But then... "It was- it was about Cas. The whole Leviathan deal. It was kinda..like I was reliving it. I was just looking at him and his eyes-" Suddenly Deanna let out a sob. She wiped at her eyes. "Sorry, I just-" and she was cut off again by a stifling bear hug. She flinched, and then hugged her brother back.

Sam pulled away. "I'm so sorry, Dee. I had a case laid out for us, but forget it. I'll call someone else. We can start looking for him first thing tomorrow, okay?"

She silently nodded and Sam kissed her on the temple. "Good night, Dee."

He started to get up, but Deanna grabbed his arm. "Sam? Can you- can you do me a favor?"

"Anything," Sam told her with worry in his eyes.

"Can you- God, this is so gay- can you...stay here tonight? I'm scared I might...hurt myself."

His eyes widened and he nodded. "Of course." He slid under the covers and hugged his sister. "Love you Dee."

"You too Sam."

Deanna sat at the table across from her brother and took a sip of her coffee. "So where should we start to look?"

Sam sighed. "Well...that's the thing. We have no clue."

"We could ask Kevin."

"Kevin is out right now. And I don't know how he would know," Sam sighed.

"He's a prophet Sam. He knows plenty." Deanna ran a hand through her hair. "Charlie?"

"How?"

She made a frustrated noise. "I don't know!" She threw her fist on the table. "

Hey, hey, Dee, it's okay. We just started looking."

She put her head in her hands. "I just want him to be okay," Deanna whispered.

"I know. Me too. Why don't we put out a missing persons report to start?"

"Under what name, Sam?" Deanna snapped, with clenched teeth.

But Sam calmly said," We could put it under Jimmy Novak."

Deanna nodded. "Okay. I'll go down to the P.O."

"I'll be here," Sam said with a wave.

Deanna grabbed her keys and went out the garage.

"Uh, he's about 6'1", dark black hair, blue eyes.."

"And what was he wearing the day of his disappearance?" The clerk at the desk of the Lebanon Police Office asked.

"Uh...a black suit, a blue tie, a tan trench coat over that."

"His name?"

"J-James Novak."

"Your name?"

"Erm...Dee Winchester."

"And your phone number?"

"866-907-3235."

"Okay. We'll get right on that, ma'am."

"Yeah. Thanks," said Deanna as she walked out the door. She got in the Impala and slammed the door. She stared out the windshield in thought for a moment, and then sighed and pulled out her phone. She went into the contacts to call Sam, but her finger ended up lingering over Cas' contact. She finally gave in and called the number, only to be hit with no rings. "You have reached the voicemail box of-" Deanna cut the robotic voice off before it could go any further. She threw her phone on the seat next to her and started driving down the street, blasting Led Zeppelin like no one's business. A couple soccer moms cowered away from the huge black muscle car with Plant's voice blaring through the open windows, and Deanna smirked at them. Pansies. It wasn't until she stopped at the third red light that the feeling came over her. She looked out the driver's side window and saw this little mom and pop pizza place called, "A Little Slice of Heaven." All she did was look at the sign and she knew she had to get in there. If she didn't, well, there was a bridge across town. Deanna immediately ran the red light, earning a few honks from other drivers, but she didn't care. She needed to get into the restaurant. She quickly parked the Impala and hopped out, running into the restaurant. It was completely empty. Not a thing. Just an empty room. The doors locked behind her, all by themselves.

"What the hell?" Deanna muttered. Suddenly, a figure appeared out of nowhere and touched her forehead. In the blink of an eye, she was somewhere entirely different, naked, and tied to a table.

Someone was standing in front of her, holding an angel blade menacingly, with facing the wall. "Nice of you to join me, Deanna Winchester," they said in a low voice. The name of the restaurant, the touch of the forehead, the angel blade...it all of a sudden hit her.

"What the hell do you want, you perverted dick with wings?" Deanna spat.

The angel turned around and smirked. "Answers," he said calmly.

"Well, it's good to know this is the new way to play Jeopardy, but I was kinda in the middle of something," she said angrily.

Instead of saying anything, the angel walked over to her with a smirk. He mojoed a table up next to Deanna that had plenty of torture apparatuses on it. He set down his angel blade and let one of his hands hover over the table, finally deciding on a jagged, rusty knife. He lowered the knife down to her thigh and carved a squiggle into it, Deanna screaming the whole time. She felt the blood rush down her thigh.

"You son of a bitch!"

The angel smiled. "That was just a teaser, Miss Winchester."

"What the hell do you want from me anyway?" Deanna shouted.

Mr. Feathers sliced a straight line, just underneath her breast. Tears welled in her eyes and a pained whimper escaped her lips.

"Learn to be polite. A bad attitude will get you nowhere," the man cooed.

"Fuck...you..." Deanna grunted through clenched teeth. He put the flat edge of the knife on her cheek, and then set it down and simply slapped her instead.

"Let me finish!" He bellowed. Deanna could only whimper.

"I'm going to need to know where Castiel is," he growled. She barked out a laugh. He punched her in the gut.

"This is no laughing matter!"

"Yeah, it is," she said hoarsely, but still with a smirk. "Because I don't know either."

He picked up a pair of pliers and held one of her hands. "What a shame. You were pretty," he taunted as he pulled out her thumbnail slowly. She screamed, tears falling down her face.

"I...don't...know," she whispered.

"I know you do!" The angel yelled. He kicked her ankle and a sickening crunch elicited another scream from Deanna.

"I don't know, I don't know..." She chanted.

A flutter from the other side of the room told her another angel was making a guest appearance. "Has she told you yet?" A female voice asked. The male angel gestured to the table where Deanna lied.

"I don't know, I swear!" She trembled.

The new angel walked towards her and walked in a circle around the table. "She tells the truth, Adriel."

Adriel let out a frustrated sigh and set down his torture tool. He came next to her face, so close she could smell his angelic breath. "I _will_ be checking in on you, Deanna Winchester," he promised, and then with a touch of her forehead, she landed in the living room of the bunker.

She lay on the rug, unable to call out due to the pain. She could feel her blood pouring out of her body and on the floor in a pool around her. She heard a voice echo from the study, "Hey Dee, it's me, I'm getting kinda worried now. I'm gonna come look for you. Hope you're okay." Sam shut his phone and walked into the living room, stopping in his tracks at the sight of his sister, naked and bleeding on the floor. "Shit," he said, and that was the last thing Deanna heard before closing her eyes.

Her eyes fluttered open to see a hospital room. She looked to her left and found a cup of water next to her. She tried to reach it, but she couldn't lift her arm.

"Dee?" Came a soft voice from her right.

She slowly turned her head. "Sam?"

"Yeah, it's me," he answered. "What the hell happened?"

"Fucking angels," she said thickly.

"The angels did this?" He asked with anger and surprise in his voice.

Deanna nodded. "They wanted to know where Cas was."

"So they did THIS?" Sam belted.

"Speaking of, what is this exactly?" She asked.

"Uh, multiple knife wounds, missing fingernail, bruised jawbone, and a broken ankle," Sam replied grimly.

"Fuckin' awesome. I'm gonna knock those bitches so hard..." Deanna shook her head.

"Do you know who it was?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, actually. Adriel," Dee said.

"Hey, where is my pho- oh shit."

"What?" Said Sam, knitting his eyebrows.

"Those bastards have my keys! And my favorite shirt!" Deanna shouted.

Sam smiled. "Nope," he said as he tossed both of the items to her, pointing to her jeans and boots on the chair next to him.

"How..?" She questioned with a grin.

"They were here when we got here," Sam told her.

"Well, at least those sons of bitches had the decency to return my stuff," she muttered as she put on her shirt. There was a knock on the door, and a doctor wearing glasses came in. Dr. Gabriel (the irony could not be better) told her cast on the ankle would be off in two weeks, and everything else would heal nicely if she just rested (Deanna grumbled a bit there, but it was better when the doctor said she would have to eat a lot of ice cream due to her jawbone). Then he gave Sam a paper and told them they'd be in with her rental wheelchair in a few minutes. True to his word, someone came in with a wheel chair and helped Deanna into it. "Now all I need is a trucker hat, an accent, and a bad attitude…" Deanna mumbled. Sam laughed at that.

Two weeks past slower than molasses, especially since there was still no call about Cas. But Sam and Deanna still looked for him. They called into other POs and put out missing person reports, they asked demons, they even summoned Adriel. They got nothing out of him.

Sam killed him violently.

About three weeks after she was in the hospital, her phone started buzzing on the table, lifting her attention from the book she was translating from Latin. The screen told her it was an "unidentified caller," but she picked it up anyway.

"Hello?" She said in a rough voice.

"Deanna?" Came a voice from the other end. It was broken up, but recognizable. Deanna scrambled out of her seat, gaining the attention of Sam in the seat across from her. "Cas?" she asked skeptically.

"Put it on speaker!" Sam ordered, and Deanna did so, keeping the phone in her hand.

"Ye-me- at-bus- B- Alton-" Cas' voice crackled from the speaker of the phone.

"Cas? Buddy, I can hardly hear you. Wherever you are, I will be there tomorrow morning. I-" Deanna stopped as the other line hung up. She scrubbed her face with one of her hands. "What the hell was that supposed to mean?"

From behind his laptop, Sam answered," I'm guessing he's at the B route bus station in Alton, Illinois."

Deanna lifted an eyebrow. "Impressive. How long?"

Sam shrugged. "'Bout eight hours."

"Perfect," Deanna muttered, putting on her jacket. "See you in 24 then."

Sam grabbed her wrist as she jogged by. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

She rolled her eyes, tugging away from her brother's grip. "Oh, you know, to a strip club. I'm looking for a job. Where do you THINK I'm going, Sam? To Alton, Illinois!"

Sam shook his head. "Not without me you're not."

"Yes, actually!" Deanna shouted. "You need to hold down the fort, make sure Kevin is good, and...we don't have time for this!" She began to walk away, but Sam caught her shoulder and spun her around.

"Deanna, I get you and Cas have your...profound bond, okay? I get that. But Cas is important to me too! Cas is my friend! Cas is...Cas is family, Dee. I care about him just as much as you do. And I want to make sure he- not to mention YOU- are okay. The three of us and Kevin- that's our family. I just want to make sure that it doesn't get smaller." Deanna clenched her jaw, and then Sam brought out the puppy eyes. She rubbed her eyes.

"Dammit Sam...get in the freakin car."

The drive to Alton was mostly silent, other than the music coming from the stereo and the occasional request for a bathroom run. After what felt like an eternity, they skidded into a parking spot at the B Route bus station. "I hope he didn't go anywhere," Sam muttered as they stepped out of the car.

Deanna knitted her eyebrows and walked towards the escalator. They descended into the foul smelling, homeless filled bus station in silence. "I'll take right, you take left," Deanna said, upon realizing there were two corridors. Sam nodded in his "yes, sir" way and ran down the left flank. In somewhat of an imitation, Deanna ran down the right passageway, inspecting each of the homeless persons for her angel. She had been up and down the same way five times and was beginning to lose hope when her name echoed through the passage.

"Sam?" She asked_. "Deanna..."_ No. Not Sam. The sound was closer. She looked down and saw one of the homeless men- no. That was _Cas_.

"Oh my god," she whispered, and kneeled next to the sleeping lump of trench coat and beard. "Deanna." He mumbled again, but louder this time. He sounded distressed. "Cas!" Deanna said as she shook him, cupping his face in her hands. "Deanna!" Cas shouted, fear in his voice.

"Cas! Castiel! Wake up!" She shook him again, and his eyes fluttered open. He looked at her in shock for a moment, his chapped lips parted in surprise.

"Am I dreaming?" He whispered.

She chuckled, tears pricking at her eyes. "No."

He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "You found me."

Deanna smirked, a happy tear spilling out of her eye, and then she kissed him tenderly. "I will always find you."


End file.
